Adelaide’s tough run home may take turn for worse against Hawks

No home side is under greater pressure this week than ninth-placed Adelaide, who face Hawthorn in the lead-in to a number of tricky late-season assignments. That run towards September includes away missions against Collingwood, Brisbane (yes, I’m calling that a curly one for the Crows) and North Melbourne, plus home games against West Coast, Richmond and St Kilda. The last of those fixtures is the only real certainty for the patchy Crows, so they will need to win games in which they’re a 50-50 proposition or worse. Against the Hawks, they’re far worse than a 50-50 proposition.

Brian Lake’s WCW wrestling exhibition last weekend rather took the focus off Hawthorn’s shock defeat against North, but the surprises have kept coming during the week, with Hawks big man David Hale making way for Ben McEvoy. Talk until then had centred on the remarkable situation in which the big-name recruit McEvoy was being kept out of the side by the strong performances of unheralded Jonathon Ceglar, but it’s Hale who now pays the price for Ceglar’s stellar form.

That such an issue qualifies as a “problem” probably says a bit about Hawthorn as a club, to be honest. In theory they should get back on the horse with a win here, especially given that Thompson, Dangerfield, Rutten and Talia are carrying various ailments for Adelaide.

Out with the old, in with the new

Poor Tom Williams. Last week we paid tribute to one of the game’s most durable defenders in Adelaide warhorse Ben Rutten, and now another one bites the dust. Though Rutten and Williams patrolled similar defensive territory in their careers, the story of Dogs defenders’ career couldn’t contrast more greatly with ‘Truck'. A more apt piece of imagery for Williams would be an ambulance, such was his cruel run of bad luck with injuries. Fellow Bulldog Robert Murphy paid him a heartfelt tribute this week and no one had a better insight into Williams’s struggle to stay on the park than his veteran colleague.

Picked up by the Bulldogs in the 2004 draft, Williams managed only 85 games across the last decade in a stop-start career in defence, amply illustrating the enormous physical toll the game takes on sometimes fragile young bodies. He found some durability between 2009 and 2011, playing 54 games in that time. Five other seasons reaped an average of just six games a year as he was regularly consigned to the rehab room. On Saturday, Williams’s teammates head to Cazaly Stadium in Cairns to take on the eighth-placed Suns. The latter have easily accounted for the Dogs in the past two seasons and only the absence of Gary Ablett gives any pause to consider an alternative script this time around.

Bulldogs fans would have the right to rue such a poor season when things had looked so promising in the lead-up, so a win here would be a small consolation prize for their patience with this talented but frustrating side.

The temptation of scanning through the TAC Cup player lists

Season 2014 has been a concern to long-suffering Tigers fans. Photograph: Michael Dodge/Getty Images

Having been brought back to reality in the past month with three defeats and some minor ego bruises, Ken Hinkley’s Port Adelaide side may unleash a whole lot of pent-up frustration against Richmond this Sunday at Etihad Stadium. The Tigers are coming off a soda against St Kilda and a slightly less impressive win against Brisbane (their only two consecutive wins of the season), but the gulf in quality between these two sides suggests they won’t have it as easy against the Power.

With the Tigers out of finals contention, how should their supporters be thinking right now? Talk will often turn to a side in Richmond’s position "restoring credibility" and "showing something" to fans (yes, forget what I said about the Bulldogs). But with this game, and away trips to West Coast, Adelaide and Sydney on the horizon, you’d be half-tempted to start gazing at the draft order, right? Not that I’m suggesting anything underhand, but defeats in those four fixtures would put the Tigers in the frame to at least take something positive out of the season. It’s OK if you’re thinking along those lines, Tigers supporters, we won’t judge.

To Fletcher or not to Fletcher

At the time of writing, Dustin Fletcher has not yet been selected to take his place in his 34th game (yes, you read that right) against Collingwood. The sad thing as far as Fletcher fans are concerned is that his much-discussed omission from the side last week was implicitly justified by the Dons’ stirring win against Port Adelaide. Either way, the 390-game Bombers legend is responsible for probably the greatest stat in all of football, having now been watched live by 18,806,743 people. That’s even more people than have watched Crazy Frog Bros on YouTube. Surely there can be no higher accolade in the game.

Essendon and their opponents, Collingwood, have many more pressing matters to deal with leading in to their Sunday clash at the MCG, obviously. A win keeps the Bombers in with a sniff of finals action and though the Pies long ago surrendered their claims to a top-four finals spot, there are not many things more satisfying for a Collingwood supporter than beating Essendon at the MCG. Whisper it quietly, but the Pies are no finals certainties themselves, with a tough run home. For many reasons beyond traditional rivalries, this ranks as the most appetising match of the round.

Bonus (well, sort of): this game will be coming to you live via the Guardian goal-by-goal blog. After your sandwich has digested and before you crack your first coldie, don’t forget to stop by and join in the fun.

The best and worst of the rest

Let’s all be honest with one another at this point: aside from tonight’s game and the Collingwood-Essendon blockbuster, this round is something of a turkey. Melbourne have been in with a puncher’s chance nearly every weekend this year, but you’d have to be a lunatic to tip them against Geelong. On the flipside, it’s nice that North Melbourne are heading down to Tassie to take on the Saints, because if the match were played at Etihad it might end in an annihilation that would make Brazil’s World Cup semi-final defeat look like Escape to Victory.

Brisbane’s home game against West Coast promises a slightly more even contest, and though the latter remain a mathematical possibility of reaching September, they’re the kind of side that will be annihilated by any half-decent finals team anyway. Sydney might keep with the theme of their home ground and rack up a cricket score against Carlton in a game that promises to be as lopsided as any. Finishing us off in potentially more ways than one, the Giants could re-recruit Israel Folau and stick him in the goal square wearing a 50-gallon cowboy hat and no one would notice, such is the likelihood that they’ll be allowed to score by the Fremantle defence.